NICOLE Cooke’s potential successor as the queen of Welsh women’s cycling has been tipped to strike world gold for the second time in six months.

NICOLE Cooke’s potential successor as the queen of Welsh women’s cycling has been tipped to strike world gold for the second time in six months.

Olympic champion Joanna Rowsell has given a ringing endorsement to Cardiff ace Elinor Barker ahead of next month’s track World Championships in Belarus.

Teenager Barker pedalled to glory – she was silver medallist in 2011 – in the under-19 time trial at the road world championships in The Netherlands last September.

And she set up her Great Britain team-mate Lucy Garner for a second world title in a row with a stunning lead-out in the junior road race.

Llanishen Comprehensive School pupil Barker became Wales’ first female world cycling champion since Cooke completed an Olympic and world road title during an extra-ordinary six weeks in 2008.

Cooke announced her retirement a fortnight ago but the future of Welsh women’s cycling appears bright with Barker and Pontyberem-based Towy Valley’s product Amy Roberts at the fore-front.

The pair and Leicestershire’s Garner, who will ride solely on the road this year after signing for powerful Dutch out-fit Argos-Shimano, powered to the team pursuit title in British colours at the European Junior Championships.

Barker was drafted into the senior line-up for the Glasgow round of the track World Cup and combined forces with London Olympics champions Laura Trott and Dani King to race to a stunning success.

That trio are set to combine during next month’s World Championships in the Baltic Sea city of Minsk with Roberts likely to be a reserve.

“They won the Glasgow World Cup with very limited preparation,” said three-time world champion Rowsell, who was the third member of the world record shattering Olympic conquering team.

Rowsell will take a break from the velodrome this winter to focus on the road after being an integral part of the squad which has won four team pursuit world titles in five years.

But she’s likely to return to the discipline at same stage in the future with the women’s team pursuit changing from three women and 3km to four riders and 4km after this season,

“Riders like Elinor and Amy need that sort of experience because next year we’re going to need four riders anyway,” explained Rowsell.

Britain with crowd-pleaser Trott, the winner of a second gold medal in London with a spell-binding display in the omnium, at the helm will be firm favourites for glory in Minsk.

Trott and King have already pocketed two world titles but want to make it three in a row.

The long-term goal is defending the team pursuit title at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, an event in which Barker and Roberts are ear-marked by British Cycling performance director Sir Dave Brailsford and women’s endurance coach Paul Manning to play major roles.

Rowsell won her first world title in 2008, aged 19, before the women’s team pursuit became an Olympic discipline.

Given the expansion of it, she is confident of reclaiming her place when she returns to the track, but for now her focus is on the road.

Barker, Roberts, Trott and Rowsell have all been signed up by Wiggle Honda, which is the brain-child of Australia’s Commonwealth champion Rochelle Gilmore and is supported by Sir Bradley Wiggins, through his foundation.

Rowsell will turn domestique and do her utmost to help the team leaders, including Gilmore and Italy’s two-time world road race champion Giorgia Bronzini to glory in the road World Cup and other major events.

The 24-year-old, who has twice reached the podium at the British Road Race Championships, said: “I want to push myself out of my comfort zone.”

The team time-trial at the World Road Championships in Florence, Italy next September, where Wiggle Honda will compete together, is a target, and at next year’s Glasgow Commonwealth Games Rowsell could ride on the track and the road for England.

“There’s no team pursuit for women, so we’re all going to be individual events anyway,” said Rowsell.

That means she could go head-to-head with Barker and Roberts, who will be expected to be clad in the red of Wales.

Rowsell added: “The individual pursuit on the track is something that excites me and it might be interesting to do the road events as well.”

:: Joanna Rowsell is an ambassador for Action Medical Research (Twitter: @amr_events).

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